“Yeah,” Eddie said. He was thinking about the way clouds flowed along the Beam, the way shadows bent along the Beam, the way every twig of every tree seemed to turn in its direction. All things serve the Beam, Roland had told them, and Eddie’s need to see the paper Balazar had put in front of Calvin Tower had felt like a need, harsh and imperative.

“Tell me what it said.”

Eddie bit his lip. He didn’t feel as scared about this as he had about carving the key which had ultimately allowed them to rescue Jake and pull him through to this side, but it was close. Because, like the key, this was important. If he forgot something, worlds might crash.

“Man, I can’t remember it all, not word for word—”

Roland made an impatient gesture. “If I need that, I’ll hypnotize you and get it word for word.”

“Do you think it matters?” Susannah asked.

“I think it all matters,” Roland said.

“What if hypnosis doesn’t work on me?” Eddie asked. “What if I’m not, like, a good subject?”

“Leave that to me,” Roland said.

“Nineteen,” Jake said abruptly. They all turned toward him. He was looking at the letters he and Eddie had drawn in the dirt beside the dead campfire. “Claudia y Inez Bachman. Nineteen letters.”

Three

Roland considered for a moment, then let it pass. If the number nineteen was somehow part of this, its meaning would declare itself in time. For now there were other matters.

“The paper,” he said. “Let’s stay with that for now. Tell me everything about it you can remember.”

“Well, it was a legal agreement, with the seal at the bottom and everything.” Eddie paused, struck by a fairly basic question. Roland probably got this part of it—he’d been a kind of law enforcement officer, after all—but it wouldn’t hurt to be sure. “You know about lawyers, don’t you?”

Roland spoke in his driest tone. “You forget that I came from Gilead, Eddie. The most inner of the Inner Baronies. We had more merchants and farmers and manufactors than lawyers, I think, but the count would have been close.”

Susannah laughed. “You make me think of a scene from Shakespeare, Roland. Two characters—might have been Falstaff and Prince Hal, I’m not sure—are talkin about what they’re gonna do when they win the war and take over. And one of em says, ‘First we’ll kill all the lawyers.’ ”

“It would be a fairish way to start,” Roland said, and Eddie found his thoughtful tone rather chilling. Then the gunslinger turned to him again. “Go on. If you can add anything, Jake, please do. And relax, both of you, for your fathers’ sakes. For now I only want a sketch.”